Love Sick
by JMenace
Summary: Stripped of a sensei and behind enemy lines, Team 7 is forced to grow strong before their time. But escaping tragedy with your life is not the same as escaping intact. The children of the tree were born to suffer. Naruto and Sasuke are simply next in line. (fem!Sasuke)
1. Chapter 1

Uzumaki Naruto had never thought much about dying. If he was being honest, he didn't tend to think about a whole helluva lot unless it was in front of his face. He'd been threatened with death plenty of times, sure, but it was just one of those things. Like getting beat up, but worse. _You graffiti my shop again, I'll kill ya. Keep skipping class, you're dead._ After a while it went in one ear and out the other. They'd tried to prepare them all for it in the Academy, but why plan for something you weren't gonna do? He wasn't dying anytime soon. How should he know how he'd take it when he did?

Turns out, he got pissed.

Naruto coughed, ribs rattling in his chest with each spasm. They'd been smashed to pieces. He spat, bloody saliva bubbling and steaming as soon as it left his mouth. He'd been driven into the earth and buried in liquid fire, could barely see the sky through the haze. He was burning alive, he couldn't breathe, and he'd never been in more pain in his life.

It made him madder than hell. He thrashed in the magma, howling in pain and outrage, and when he couldn't find any traction he crossed his fingers and spawned shadow clones by the dozens, all of them as broken and bleeding as himself, until one at the top of the pile rolled weakly over the edge of the pit and reached back down for him. It gnashed its teeth and hauled him up, and through the superheated air and flames, Naruto could almost swear its eyes were red.

It dispelled in the next instant and he staggered to his feet. What remained of the forest they'd been caught in was on fire, riddled with craters like the one he'd just crawled out of. The smoke would have been oppressive even without the shattered ribs, but with them it was unbearable. Lightning crackled and screamed somewhere in the distance, steel ground and chimed, but it all seemed so far away.

 **"Old man,"** he growled. The heat had mangled his throat, turned his voice guttural. Yoton no Roshi came to a halt not ten feet from his downed teammates, looking back at him in disbelief.

"Still? What are they feeding ya in Konoha, boy?" He flexed the fingers of his right hand, the one that had buried Naruto. It was still smoking.

Naruto hit the bottom of the pit like a comet, and only realized he'd been hit when he gagged on a tooth that had been knocked out of place. The bastard had knocked him back in? He clawed his way back up without help, furious at the cheek of it. This time he saw the blow coming, but that didn't stop Roshi from stomping him back into the pit as soon as he gained the lip.

His blood thundered. Naruto braced and leapt straight up, tanking the next hit and rolling across the dirt and char. He dug his fingers and toes in and came up to a sprinter's crouch. The pain kept coming, but so did strength. Adrenaline. He felt like he could take on the world, and die as soon as he won.

"Gotta say, the longer this goes on, the more I like ya," Roshi said, rolling his shoulder. Naruto tensed and threw himself spiraling sideways through the air, avoiding the next punch by inches. He still couldn't track the bastard's speed with his eyes, but he could react. He could move.

 **"Let's get _wild._ "**

"Now you're talkin'!"

Naruto crashed into the veteran shinobi at full speed, knocking him back a step and wrenching at his stone chestplate. Roshi seized him by the back of his orange jacket, uncaring of the magma sloughing off it, and heaved him over his head before slamming him back to the dirt. Naruto bounced back madder, stronger, and took him out at the knees.

There was no grace to it. No technique. Maybe he should have gone to class after all, but it was too late to worry about. They hit the dirt and Naruto scrambled to gain a dominant position, but he was still too slow. Roshi braced himself on one hand as he fell and used it to leverage a spinning kick that caught Naruto on the chin and flipped him end over end.

Outclassed. Naruto pushed harder. It felt like he was using up all his life's potential, draining it like broth from the bowl in one long pull. And if he was, it'd be worth it. He'd be damned if he let Roshi kill him _and_ win.

Naruto summoned a dozen clones and fell upon Roshi from all angles. Most died immediately, but most wasn't good enough. One landed on Roshi's back and latched itself there, tearing at whatever unarmored skin it could find and sinking its teeth into his neck. Naruto used the distraction to summon more clones and took diving shots at the old jonin while he was occupied.

Roshi disappeared inside a ball of fire, and Naruto didn't even have time to lament how unfair being immune to fire was before it rolled over him, too. He lunged out of it, desperately forming clones to act as distractions while he and one other scooped his teammates up and carried them out of range. Sakura was still unconscious as his clone eased her to the ground and settled into a guarded crouch, knocked out by the concussive force of Roshi's meteors earlier in the fight.

Sasuke stared at him like he'd grown a tail. The lopsided tomoe in her freaky red eyes were spinning, her lips parted in disbelief. He tried to grin but it felt tight. Like his teeth were taking up too much space in his mouth.

 **"Don't go dying on me, bastard."** He grimaced and tried to clear his throat. Aside from wishing he'd just gargled glass instead, no dice.

A brief, hair-raising sensation and the quiet whistle of metal cutting through air were the only warning Naruto got before a kunai slammed to the hilt in his back. He staggered and fell forward, onto his hands and feet again, and locked on to the shinobi who'd thrown it. Not Roshi, who was still somewhere in the fire, but one of his men. Naruto didn't know what rank he was, but the flak jacket he wore meant he was high enough. It didn't matter.

"Hold still," Sasuke hissed.

He buckled at the next flash of pain, but then the kunai was out and he was bounding forward. He didn't bother standing fully upright. No time. The Iwa nin had used the seconds to fly through a jutsu, and molten earth left over from Roshi's meteors and that Kurotsuchi girl's lava lunged toward him in the shape of a jungle cat.

What was one more burn? Naruto tore straight through it, leaping into the enemy nin and riding him to the ground. A kunai appeared in the man's hand like magic and Naruto only just caught him by the wrist before he could drive it through his throat. He snarled and twisted as hard as he could. The bone snapped. Naruto reared back and drove his forehead into the enemy nin's face, once, twice, three times. Then he lunged sideways and let Roshi stomp his own man further into the dirt.

"You've got guts, I'll give you that." The old man rubbed his neck, and Naruto noted with frustration the steam rising from it. Whatever marks his clone had left were cauterized now. "One helluva scrapper for your age, too, though ya still have that green look. What was your name again?"

He bared his teeth, because he couldn't really grin anymore. **"Uzumaki Naruto."**

Roshi guffawed. "That explains it."

They crashed together and Naruto rattled with the force of Roshi's strength, his own injuries, and the adrenaline pounding through his veins. It was too much for him to keep up with, and the thought made him want to scream. He swamped Roshi with clones again, but the old man wiped them out with fire before they could get close. He tried to engage in hand to hand, but Roshi was stronger and faster and about a hundred years more experienced.

Meteors as large around as his waist drove him into the earth, and every time he lurched up another pounded him back down. He felt delirious. He'd had dreams like this before, hadn't he? Starving, drowning, falling, until at the peak of distress he jerked awake and fell off his bed. Was that what this was? It had to be, right?

If it was, he wasn't at the peak yet. His skin was blistering, bubbling with heat. It should have hurt more than it did.

The meteor shower paused. For a long moment Naruto lay there, stunned. Then he heard screaming, had a faint impression of being crushed by sand, and his heart lurched up into his throat. He poured chakra into forming clones and rushed out of the pit with them.

A storm was rolling through the battlefield. The same storm they'd been running from for the last three days, clouds and reaching tendrils of sand that swept up fleeing shinobi one limb at a time and pulped them. Naruto cast around, sent clones in every direction, but he couldn't see a thing past the encroaching sand. Where were they? No, no, no-

Fire bloomed like a flower, and Naruto saw Sasuke at its center, struggling to walk with her injuries and Sakura's dead weight. Sand rushed to overtake them. Every clone he'd summoned ran into the sand, advancing by nothing but virtue of numbers. Clones snared and crushed were overtaken by more clones, running through the dead space and chakra smoke left behind.

" _Boy!_ " Roshi roared. Naruto tensed, but he wasn't the target this time. The old Iwa nin stomped the blackened earth. "What the good god damn d'ya think you're doin' to my team!?"

It was the only opening he was gonna get. Naruto hit his blind spot with everything he had and tackled him into one of his own damn craters. The old man fought back at once, hit Naruto with closed fists harder than he'd ever thought you _could_ get hit, and Naruto howled defiance and tore furrows in the man's skin with his fingernails. Roshi hocked and spat a wad of molten earth in his face, and Naruto spat sizzling blood right back in his.

 **"Two of a kind, aren't we?"** Roshi's skin turned red hot, every scratch cauterizing at once. He bucked Naruto off and laid a kick into him that lifted him clear off the ground. He flew, senses flying wild in the sandstorm and the smoke, trying and failing to find some orientation.

Kakashi caught him.

 **"Sensei."** Relief nearly finished the job Roshi had started, making him dizzy. Then he jerked in the man's arms, remembering, **"Sasuke and Sakura, they're-"**

"They're here." Kakashi crouched and lowered him to the ground slowly, as if he could shatter to pieces at any time. Well, that wasn't far from how he felt. "Your clones kept them safe until I got here. You've done a great job, Naruto. Can you walk?"

 **"Can do more'n that,"** he slurred. It was hard to talk, for some reason. He rose up to his hands and feet, decided that was more comfortable than standing, and braced.

"No." A hand that brooked no argument came down on the back of his neck. Naruto bristled and started to snap at it, then stopped. Where had that come from? "That's enough. You'll tear yourself apart if you keep going."

"Just give it a rest, idiot." Sasuke's voice. The words lacked the usual bite, though. She almost sounded concerned.

 **"They're coming,"** Naruto insisted. **"Old man and the psycho. Can't take 'em both."** It felt like Roshi had kicked him halfway across the forest, but he could see the sand coming. The old Iwa bastard would be in there somewhere, and something told him they wouldn't be lucky enough to have the two cancel each other out.

"I can't," Kakashi agreed. "But neither can you. Run."

He didn't even think about it. **"No way."**

"Naruto, look at me." Naruto hesitated. He didn't want to, really truly didn't. But he did. Kakashi had his headband up again, revealing a freaky red eye just like Sasuke's, but with more tomoe. In the weeks that he'd known him, Naruto had never seen him look so serious.

"You can't always win. Sometimes circumstances are outside your control, sometimes you suffer losses. Like now." He gripped Naruto's shoulders tight, leaned in. "If we don't bend, we break. A shinobi endures, Naruto. We're in over our heads, we can't win. Your teammates won't make it without you. Do you understand?"

Naruto clenched his eyes shut.

 _"Do you understand?"_

 **"Ye-"**

Roshi dropped the sky on them.

Kakashi threw Naruto out of the blast and scooped his teammates up in a blur, and Naruto scrambled as frustration and grief reached a peak in his chest. He snarled and dashed on all fours, hitting Roshi as soon as he emerged from the sandstorm and driving them both back into it.

The old man was changing. His dark eyes had turned a violent orange without pupils or irises, two long fangs hung down from his top row of teeth, and even through the haze of pain-numbing adrenaline Naruto's skin screamed at the heat of being in close proximity to him. He flattened Naruto with one punch, but before he could follow up on it a pair of hounds made of pure electricity sprinted into the sandstorm and pounced on him.

 **"Enough, boy."**

They died with crackling yelps, before Naruto could fully recover, and Roshi drew back a fist that shimmered with chakra.

Kakashi appeared between them in a shower of leaves and Roshi tore out his heart.

He staggered forward a step, one arm wreathed in lightning, and fell. Naruto stared, frozen, unable to put it together in his head. Kakashi's corpse stared back at him, not accusing, not afraid, not much of anything but dead. And yet, it was like he was shouting louder than anything.

Endure.

Naruto turned and ran, ignored Roshi's cursing and thrashing in the sand, ignored Sasuke's frantic questions as he threw her and Sakura over his shoulders, ignored the Tsuchikage's granddaughter as she shouted orders. He ran for all he was worth, and then he ran harder than that.

He left Kakashi behind, and promised he'd never lose again.

* * *

Uchiha Sasuke wasn't surprised when her idiot teammate's miraculous strength left him as abruptly as it had come. In the space between breaths she felt his shoulders sag beneath their weight, braced herself for a tumble that was almost guaranteed to upset her broken wrist. She _was_ surprised when Naruto planted his front foot and caught himself, cursed under his breath, and continued on. If his pace had slowed, she guessed it wasn't for lack of trying.

"Naruto," she said. "You're going to kill yourself."

No response.

"Hey, idiot."

Nothing. Her eyes narrowed.

"Ow! Bastard!" Naruto flinched away from her, but she only twisted his ear harder.

"I'm getting down." She waited for him to stop, then slid down and set her feet on the forest floor. Her legs buckled and Naruto hollered in pain as she yanked on his ear for balance. The past three days on top of the hours she'd just spent slung over his shoulder like a sack of rice had turned her limbs to jelly. She waited until she was sure they'd hold before she let go.

"What was that for?" Naruto grumbled, shifting Sakura off his other shoulder and leaning her up against a tree. For all that he tried to muscle through it, she could see the tremors in his arms.

"You're killing yourself," she said again.

"I'm fine." He didn't sit down, she noted. Probably worried he wouldn't be able to stand back up if he did. "But we're dead for sure if they catch up to us again. You heard sensei-" He faltered, and her stomach rolled at the memory of the heart burning in Roshi's fist. Naruto scowled and kept on, "He said it's on me to get us back home."

"And where is home?" she challenged him, and cursed the answering blank shock. She should have known. If she'd lost her orientation in the fight, why would he have been any different? "You've just been running this whole time, haven't you? We could be in Snow right now and you'd have no idea."

"I would! There'd be snow!"

"Well it's raining," she snapped. "So where are we?" He didn't know, obviously. She dug through the supply kit at her thigh and came up with a pack of smelling salts, threw them at Naruto.

"Wake her up. We can't afford the dead weight."

She set about filling a canteen while he made himself useful, holding it beneath a sagging leaf to catch the runoff. The rain was a many-faced blessing, soothing thirst as well as the burns they'd all sustained, and with any luck wiping away their trail. She supposed that Naruto's mindless escape could also have aided them in its own way. The enemy couldn't predict their path if they had no idea of it themselves.

"Ah! Wha- Sasuke!"

Sakura all but threw Naruto to the side as she stumbled to her feet. Sasuke imagined her last conscious moments were playing themselves out in her head, when Sasuke had been put out of the fight while saving her from one of Roshi's meteors. For all that she'd been knocked out, she'd probably taken the least damage of the three of them. Annoying.

"Are you okay? What happened? Everything moved so fast, I remember the forest caught fire and I lost track of the client but I could see Kakashi-sensei fighting the Tsuchikage's granddaughter and-"

"Kakashi is dead."

"What the hell, Sasuke!" Naruto glared at her and she glared right back. They didn't have time to beat around the bush.

"Kakashi-sensei is…" It hit her in waves, shock into denial into despair. "N-Naruto… that's not true, is it? He's not-" Naruto grit his teeth and looked away when she tried to meet his eyes. A sob rocked her back into the tree. "No, oh no…"

"He died saving me," he said, tortured. "It's my fault."

"Don't be stupid," Sasuke said. As much as she hated to admit it, and oh, did she hate it, he was the only reason they were still alive. Sakura had been more trouble than she was worth, and even her sharingan hadn't been enough to keep pace for more than a couple minutes.

She took stock of her supplies, frustrated to find little but the absolute basics of utility and weaponry. Naruto had gotten his backpack burnt what felt like weeks ago jumping into one of her jutsu, and theirs had been left behind in the chaos of the fight with Iwa. Aside from the canteen clipped to her belt and the contents of her pouches, she had nothing. It would be the same for them.

"We need food and a map," she decided. Priorities. "Naruto, help me splint my wrist."

"W-wait," Sakura said. "I'm better with first aid, let me-"

"It's fine. See if you can figure out where we are." She found a serviceable branch and had Naruto hold it still while she carved it into a smooth brace. His bandage wrapping was sloppy, but it held well enough. "You lost your headband," she mused.

"I did?" Alarmed, he prodded the hair usually held up by the cloth and metal. Sasuke rolled her eyes.

"We're better off without them until we make it to Fire Country." She untied her own and folded it up into her utility pouch. Her hair fell into her eyes, wet with rain, and she shook her head until it was more or less out of the way. "How are your injuries?"

"Told you, I'm good." He shrugged. "Felt like I was falling apart back then, but it didn't end up being too bad."

"Naruto," she said slowly. "One of those meteors took me and Sakura out of the fight, and it didn't hit us directly. Roshi was burying you with them."

She'd had a long time to think about the red irises and slit pupils that she'd seen after he crawled out of the first crater. The way he'd grinned at her, with canines longer and sharper than any human had, and spoke in that guttural, snarling voice. Her sharingan had shown her the way his chakra changed, a flickering yellow in one moment, and a raging blood-orange the next. She'd never forget it, thanks to her eyes.

"Turn around." His orange jumpsuit had been burnt almost to tatters, especially the back of it, so she didn't have to move it to see there was no lingering sign of the kunai she'd pulled out of his back. No scar. Even the blood had been washed away by the rain.

"Does this hurt?" She poked the skin where a bloody wound should be. He shook his head. "You're not even burnt. What did you do, idiot?"

"How should I know? I'm not a damn medic."

"Guys," Sakura said, sounding frightened. "I don't recognize these trees. They don't grow in Fire Country, and they don't look like anything we passed through in the last two weeks."

Finally, some useful information. "You went the wrong way," she told Naruto.

"Bite me."

"You wish."

"Guys!" Sakura stood shivering in the rain, hands balled up in her red dress. "What do we do?"

It was a question she'd been asking herself for the last several hours. Standing and fighting wasn't an option. Sakura could be trusted to fight another genin, maybe, but not the sort of nin they'd been hounded by for the last three days. Naruto was somehow not on death's door, but exhaustion was clearly taking its toll on him. As for herself, Sasuke needed time to recover and re-learn a few skills.

"We find a village," she said, and then for Naruto's benefit amended, "A civilian settlement, or something smaller. We'll need a map or directions from someone who knows the area, and then we can make a break for the nearest Fire Country outpost."

"But we're just genin," Sakura fretted, trembling on the edge of tears again. "Those were high ranking shinobi. And we might be inside their borders. What if they find us?"

"What do you think, Sakura? You got good grades in the Academy. You know what happens."

"Knock it off, bastard."

"Hn." She brought the heel of one foot up to her backside, then the other, testing the muscles in her legs. Good enough. "We'll be fine. For now let's find a place to sleep. Sakura can take first watch."

They ended up settling into a low ground depression beneath the overhanging roots of a storm-battered tree. They concealed themselves as best they could with fallen branches and other detritus, but even then their enclosure was damp and too cold for comfort. Sasuke fell asleep only after long minutes of rolling on wet leaves and dirt, jealous of the ease with which Naruto had slumped into a dead rest.

She dreamt of nothing she could put words to, but nonetheless jolted up in a cold sweat when Naruto finally shook her awake. He gave her a weird look and offered her his canteen. The water was cool and fresh, sweet on her dry throat. She joined him at the entrance of their foxhole, peering through the gaps in the branches and leaves. It was pitch dark, in the way only very early morning could be.

"You're third watch," Naruto said quietly. She hummed. Her wrist was throbbing, but aside from that she felt on her way to being well. A brief touch of chakra to her eyes brought the world into sharper clarity, allowing her to confirm that there was no chakra being used anywhere within view.

Minutes passed. "Go back to sleep," she said, side eying him. He grunted. "You need it."

"We're in a bad spot, aren't we?" Trust an idiot to point out the obvious. Sasuke watched rain hit the leaves and wondered why she couldn't predict which way they fell. There was too much she didn't know about her bloodline, too much she needed to learn. "We're in it deep. What's the plan?"

"I already told you. Find a settlement-"

"Grab a map, run home, yeah, I got that." He leaned forward, an elbow propped up on one knee, chin in his hand. "What about when they find us?"

"We don't get found."

"Don't screw with me," he growled. "They found us once. What do we do when they find us again?"

"We fight. What else?"

"We can't lose again."

"We won't," she promised him, as well as herself. "Why are you only worrying about this now? Don't tell me it just sank in."

"'Course not. But Sakura was getting pretty freaked out before. Didn't want to make it worse."

"Sheltering her won't do her any favors."

"I know," he said, annoyed. "Doesn't stop me from wanting to protect her. She's a girl, y'know?"

Sasuke scowled. "I'm a girl, too."

"Nah, you're a bastard." He grinned at her in the darkness, her sharingan rendering it in perfect detail. She scoffed. "But seriously. We're gonna have to kick a lot of ass."

"I don't need you to tell me that."

"So what's up your sleeve?"

Sasuke slowly formed hand seals, the motions awkward and painful with her splinted wrist. Each seal burned like fire to her eyes, overlapping in sequence until she formed the final seal and her jutsu came to life. Naruto sucked in a breath as lightning danced over her left arm, the faint sound of chirping birds filling their shelter. It dispelled a few moments later, and Sasuke grimaced at the muscle spasms it left in its wake. It needed work.

Kakashi's jutsu once, now hers. "The sharingan gives me enhanced perceptions and the ability to copy anything I see. _Anything,_ " she explained, her voice promising triumph. "Every jutsu they used to break us, they're mine now. I'll recreate them, I'll master them, and if Iwa or Suna find us again?" She met Naruto's eyes, shining feral blue in the dark.

"I will _crush_ them."


	2. Chapter 2

Rain fell day and night, sometimes heavy and other times like oil sizzled in a pan. They were never really dry. Naruto knew in his gut that even if they'd still had their tents and supplies, even if they'd packed for rain, they'd still be wet. It only ever stopped long enough for them to worry about the tracks they were leaving in the mud, and then it came roaring back down. Sakura had been sick for the last three days, Sasuke was surlier than ever, and Naruto chafed in unspeakable places.

"Boss," a clone whispered. Control slipped through his fingers like raindrops, pah-pah-pah, and he slid back down the tree he'd been climbing. Damn it.

"Whatcha got?" His clones knew not to return in the flesh unless they'd found something worth bringing back.

This time it was food. His clone had a snake longer than they were tall wrapped proudly around its neck, looped several times so the tail wouldn't drag on the ground. Its body was checkered brown and green, and if it had still had a head he figured it would have had some nasty looking fangs. Now that he thought about it, he remembered...

 _A sharp pain that sank into his neck and held, and a cable of muscle winding itself around his chest, constricting, growing tighter when he tried to thrash free, tighter-_

"That guy got killed by a snake?" Naruto asked, incredulous. "What a dumbass."

His clone snickered.

"Alright, hand it over." The snake was heavier than it looked, and Naruto knew immediately that skinning it was going to suck almost as much as eating it. He slung it over his shoulder like rope and started walking to their current shelter. "Bring me something good next time, will ya?"

"Yeah, let me just swing by Ichiraku and grab a couple pork specials," his clone shot back, thrusting its thumb through its index and middle fingers. "Ungrateful son of a-"

Pop. Of all the things he'd learned to do with his shadow clones over the last few days, dispelling them was by far his favorite.

Memories assaulted his senses, vague until he focused on them, and when he did the ache in his temples got a little worse. He remembered moving through the forest, sticking to the trees so he wouldn't leave tracks, practicing the tree walking Kakashi had started teaching them back before everything went to hell. Eventually he'd found the snake that had killed a clone from an earlier batch, nailed it to a tree with a kunai and cut off the head just in case.

Not anything he'd done, but there in his head just the same. This was the secret to the shadow clone jutsu that Kakashi had revealed to him in the space between running from Suna and being caught by Iwa. Most clones were built on elemental frames, but shadow clones were pure chakra and that made them special. Set them apart from the others. He still didn't know how or why, but it did.

That pure chakra connection carried memories, if he focused on remembering them. It wasn't fun, and the longer the clones lived and differed from him, the more remembering made his head throb. But it let him do things his teammates couldn't do.

His clones hunted for food and signs of civilization, wandered further from camp than either of his teammates could because they didn't need to worry about being lost or found. If a clone got lost, it gave up on hunting food and explored until it ran out of chakra. If a clone got found, it ran like hell in a random direction until it got caught and dispelled. It wasn't a perfect system, but it was better than nothing. The best he could do right now.

A different clone waved as he ducked inside their latest hideout, a shelf in the rock of a cliff face, painstakingly covered up with leaves and hanging vines.

"Hey, boss." It yawned, squinting at him through the darkness. "You taking over?"

Pop. Naruto sifted through the memories, relieved to remember that Sakura's cold hadn't gotten worse. Sasuke had fallen asleep just a couple hours ago, exhausted from practicing with her own special jutsu. He sat himself down, quiet, and pulled out a kunai. He'd never skinned a snake before. It was probably going to take a while.

Rain fell, and Naruto itched to move. He felt like bursting at the seams with energy, his body begging him to run and shout and fight. The memories of his clones only made it all worse, made the urges stronger. Uzumaki Naruto didn't hide. He didn't whisper. He sure as hell didn't skin snakes and eat them raw. He wanted to get _wild_.

But he didn't say a word. He kept on blindly scraping scales in the dark, and he waited for the girls to wake up. Because Uzumaki Naruto might not do any of those things, but a good teammate did.

* * *

A while later Naruto went cross-eyed as a new set of memories hit him. He swallowed his mouthful of snake, squinting. "Found one."

"Found what?" Sasuke's freaky red eyes swiveled to him. "A village?"

"Think so," he said, struggling to remember. There was no limit to how far his clones could move away from him, as far as he knew, but the further they got the harder it was to remember what they'd done. This one had covered some ground before it found something worth reporting back on.

A village. Or at least- "What's left of one."

"Ruins?" Sakura asked.

"Yeah."

"Did you recognize anything about them?" she pressed.

"The memories are, uh... too fuzzy. Sorry, Sakura." He was really starting to wish he hadn't skipped all those classes on history and geography.

A scoff in the dark. "Your head's too fuzzy, idiot."

"Say it to my face!"

"Your head's too fuzzy, _idiot._ "

Sakura groaned. "Just describe it."

He thought hard, gnawing on his strip of snake meat. "So my clone was moving down the river we've been following, right? It ended up leading him to this place, and it was _big_. Not Konoha big, but bigger than that village in Hot Water where we dropped off the client. And it was all wrecked." Talking about it almost solidified the memories in his head, made them easier to picture.

"Any signs of life? Tracks or campfires?" Sasuke asked.

"Can't remember."

"Then send another clone," Sakura said, exasperated.

"I get less back from my clones when they're far away. I'll need to get closer." He made a clone with instructions to hang back, the faint, near odorless scent of chakra smoke filling the rock shelf. His legs were stiff and his head ached from clone feedback and lack of sleep, but Konoha wasn't gonna come to them. Had to muscle through it.

"What do you think you're doing?" Blood red eyes bore into him, stopping him at the entrance. "We go together."

They followed the path his clone had taken through the treetops, putting their chakra control to the test on the slick branches. Sakura might as well have had glue on her sandals with how easy she found traction. Even with the clone trick Naruto had yet to master the tree walking exercise. Still, he took heart in the fact that Sasuke was slipping up as many times as him, even if she was better at hiding it.

It took them an hour to get there, but it felt like days. Tension stretched every second and turned the forest's ambient noise into something threatening. Memories of clones found and chased down by enemy nin haunted Naruto every step of the way. They still didn't know exactly what kind of force was coming after them. Part of Naruto didn't want to know.

They made it to the village, though. It was worse than he remembered.

"This is..." Sakura whispered, crouched in the cradle of a tree's branches. "It looks like it was flattened."

He would have used a stronger word. There wasn't a single building left standing, all of them blown clear off their foundations and scattered to rubble. He couldn't see the ground inside the village's perimeter because broken wood, stone, metal, and glass covered it completely. The river was the only clear path leading in, and the village's perimeter went for _miles._

"This didn't happen recently." Sasuke crept forward on her branch, eyeing the sloped distance between the village and their forest. Too far to cross with a kunai unless he really heaved it. "I don't see anyone. Let's go-"

"Wait!" Sakura whispered urgently. "What if we're not the only ones watching from the treeline?"

"I got it." Naruto formed three clones that promptly dashed down the valley towards the village. They all held their breath and waited to see if they'd die.

The first clone to make it leapt up onto a block of concrete and waved his arms in victory. Naruto stifled a whoop and waved them on. They disappeared into the village, crawling and hopping over the wreckage.

"Good enough," Sasuke said, and pushed off from their tree.

Naruto followed hot on her heels and soon enough they were clambering over what could have been apartment buildings or hospitals or ramen shops for all he could tell. He saw Sakura in his peripheral, dipping a foot experimentally into the river. She pulled it out, holding her foot above the rushing water, and then lowered it again. It pressed flat against the surface of the water, then sank inch by inch. She repeated the process a few times, and then she stepped out and started walking down the river like it was a road.

He made clones. A lot of clones.

"All of you in the water. We're gonna know how to do that by the end of the day." His clones swarmed down to the river, stripping off tattered jackets and pants as they went. Within seconds one of them had applied too much chakra trying to replicate Sakura and launched itself headfirst into a pile of broken glass.

"Shut up, Sasuke," he said immediately. She only smirked.

Creeping through the dead village was a strange experience. Naruto hadn't exactly grown up in silk and substance, but even he had never seen anything worse than a few buildings forgotten or torn down after foreclosure. The scale of the destruction made his skin crawl. Sasuke had said whatever happened hadn't happened recently, but Naruto was pretty sure it hadn't been that long ago either. There wasn't enough plant life overtaking the rubble.

Time wasn't the culprit, and Naruto had never even heard of weather bad enough to do this kind of complete, all-encompassing damage. He couldn't find a single frame of glass intact, not one piece of recognizable furniture. Let alone a clue to their location. For a few minutes he forgot all about what they were running from and wondered what they had run _into_.

Clone feedback hit him like a brick and brought him to a dead halt. It took him a second to believe it. Could clones alter the memories they sent back? Were they screwing with him? Sasuke and Sakura noticed, the three of them having stayed within eyesight of each other, and moved back to him.

"What is it? Did your clones see someone?" Sakura asked, just short of terrified. He shook his head.

"The three that went ahead found a whirlpool."

"That's it? You scared the hell out of me!"

"It's _big_." He needed some better words. "Really big."

"Show us," Sasuke said.

They followed the river and as they did the sizzle of rainfall was gradually overtaken by the roar of rushing water. The river ran a shallow decline through the village right up until it dropped away entirely, something they saw from a distance as they approached. Sakura got to the edge first with the advantage of water walking. Naruto was gratified to see the sight threw her as much as it had him.

He reached the edge with Sasuke and looked out over a whirlpool that could swallow Konoha's entire market district whole.

Sasuke stared. "That's... big."

"Yeah." From here he could just barely see other rivers feeding into the whirlpool, all of them draining down into its center a hundred feet below. He inched back without really thinking about it, mindful of the unstable footing.

She noticed, of course. "Scared?"

"Little bit."

She gave him that irritating look again, something amused and just short of a sneer. She waved at the whirlpool. "Face your fears, chicken."

Naruto resisted the urge to push her in, but if Sakura hadn't been there to get mad it would have been a close thing. He made a clone instead, and after they exchanged solemn salutes it dove into the water. It disappeared within seconds. Sakura very carefully made her way over to them, and they stood there in the rain and watched the village sink away.

He made a face. "Goes down for a while. The clone popped before it could get a good look around." That had been the most disorienting set of memories yet. His head was really starting to kill him.

"Send another one, then."

Naruto groaned.

They explored the broken village until night washed away the details they were looking for. If he hadn't been nauseous with pain from a steadily building migraine, Naruto would have been kicking himself for not utilizing his clones to the fullest. If he was smart like Sakura, knew what to look for, he could have done more. He felt it in his gut. But he also felt the snake meat rising, so he didn't give it a whole lot of thought past that.

Sakura took first watch and he slept like the dead. When he woke up some blank eternity later the absence of pain felt so good he just basked in it for a while, spread eagle on an apartment floor they'd found while digging through the ruins. There were no walls, and it wasn't actually attached to an apartment building anymore, but it was a floor and that was enough.

Chirping birds prodded him fully awake, and after some grumbling and crawling, he made it to the surface where Sasuke was practicing her stolen jutsu. She looked utterly spent.

"My turn." She ignored him, holding her unbroken arm out in front of her, fingers flat like a blade. Electricity danced across her skin, growing in intensity until her fingers trembled and jerked apart. She hissed, cutting her jutsu and shaking out her hand. "You hear me? I said-"

"Go back to sleep," Sasuke snapped. "Or make yourself useful, I don't care which. I need to master this."

"Looks like you're pretty far from that." Oh, she looked _pissed._ Naruto sent a few clones out to form a perimeter and leaned back on what probably used to be a shingled roof. "Why's it taking so long?"

"It takes longer than a few hours to recreate a jutsu of this caliber," she said, in that tone of voice that made it clear she thought he was dumb.

"You sure? It only took me a few to learn the kage bunshin."

"You wouldn't even know where to start with a jutsu this complex, idiot."

He considered that. "Or maybe you just suck." She threw a shingle at his head, and that was proof enough that she needed sleep. She was never usually this easy to rile up.

"You're gonna fry your one healthy arm, bastard." He stared her down even when the tomoe in her creepy eyes started to spin. If she thought she could intimidate Uzumaki Naruto into backing down she was even more out of it than she looked. "Take a nap and try again later. Or try a different one. You copied a bunch, right?" So unfair. Stupid sharingan.

"There's no _time,_ " she hissed, just barely keeping her voice down. "This is the one that comes easiest to me, and it's one of the strongest. I need to have at least this mastered before someone finds us. My _katon_ isn't good enough to keep us alive on its own."

"So give me one."

She looked at him like he was the crazy one throwing shingles at people's heads.

"Seriously! I'll use the clone trick and have it mastered in no time, just watch!" He jabbed his thumb at his chest, daring her to say otherwise. "Give some to Sakura, too- her chakra control's crazy good, I bet she'd learn faster than either of us."

"Her control is good because she has nothing _to_ control. The jutsu I copied would drain her in a single use, and you-" She paused, as if not sure where to begin. "Do you even know what your elemental affinity is?"

"My what?"

"Idiot. You can't just pump chakra into these techniques until they work. They're elemental in nature, and your chakra isn't."

"So teach me how to make it elemental."

"I told you we don't have time."

"Says you," he retorted. "And anyway, you seriously didn't copy a single normal jutsu? Not even one?"

"No, not one-!" Sasuke stopped short. Naruto started to grin. "Don't say a word." He grinned. Silently. "There's one. Some sort of hardening technique."

Eh, better than nothing. "How's it go?"

"There aren't any hand seals," she said, distant in the same way he was when he sifted through chakra memories. "It's like a muscle augment, but not. A chakra shell? No. Maybe..."

"What'd it look like?"

"Like a hand covered in boiling oil."

His grin vanished. "At the end?"

Sasuke nodded. His right hand tensed in that same motion he remembered clear as day, and he imagined it bubbling, tearing into Roshi like Roshi had torn into their sensei.

"Yeah," he said. "Give me that one."

* * *

They survived for eight days eating snakes and birds of prey beneath the cover of pouring rain. Iwa found them on the ninth.

Sasuke avoided their opening assault solely because of the sharingan's enhanced perception. Chakra rippled through the earth like ocean waves, burrowing through the layers of wreckage and glowing a murky russet color to her senses. She cut her latest attempt at the _raikiri_ and kicked off the upended refrigerator she'd been sitting on with all her strength. Twisting in midair, she saw the russet chakra pulsate once, and then every inch of ground it covered fell away a hundred feet down, as if the rubble and earth had been obscuring a pit trap all along.

Chakra flared around her. It was day, but with the sky blanketed as it was by storm clouds it wasn't exactly bright. The contrast made the incoming techniques shine even brighter. She could clearly see the noose being pulled tight around her neck.

Sasuke flung three shuriken, half of her remaining supply, and they cut through the rain with deadly precision. Her target cancelled his jutsu and pulled a kunai from a hidden sleeve pocket to block them, but as soon as she saw his chakra ebb she was already redirecting them with the ninja wire tied through their rings. The second enemy nin didn't manage a full block, cancelling their jutsu and raising an arm to shield their face and neck. All three metal stars pounded into flesh. That left one.

Russet chakra seeped into the earth again, and she was reminded of the psychopath from Suna as she watched it roil. It flowed just like his sand and moved to trap her just the same. In the air it was almost impossible to maneuver away, but that was fine. If she couldn't escape the jutsu, she would _use_ the jutsu.

Her chokuto hissed when she drew it, and with her eyes Sasuke divined the point in the rising dome that had been saturated with the least amount of russet chakra. She stabbed her blade into it and hit a rock, used that anchor to fling herself up and out of the jutsu's closing maw.

She hit a wall and stuck to it with chakra. She flooded her eyes with chakra and even so things were moving almost faster than she could process. The enemy nin, all dressed in the tans and reds of their village, were advancing faster than she could escape them. It was too soon. She'd known it would be, she had _known_ , and yet she'd still elected to stay in this broken village looking for information. Not they were going to pay for it.

"Naruto!" She hollered at the top of her lungs.

The shinobi she had feinted out of his jutsu appeared within her guard in a burst of speed that her sharingan struggled to track, burying his fist in her gut. _Shunshin_. She gagged, vomited bile and undigested meat over his shoulder. The enemy shinobi planted his feet and pivoted, using the same fist to slam her through the remains of an apartment's hardwood floor.

A warcry split the air and Naruto's clones fell from the sky like stars, each one of them a network of brilliantly shining yellow chakra. The shinobi looming over her - was he a jonin? The world was spinning too much to tell - fell back as half a dozen clones swarmed him, some holding kunai and others poorly imitating Roshi's stone hand technique. The application of chakra was all wrong, abysmally controlled. Dead last for a reason.

But still saving her. Sasuke used her chokuto as a brace, standing up on shaky legs and spitting the taste of sick from her mouth. She was still faintly nauseous from the blow, and it would no doubt result in a horrific bruise in the following days, but even still she had emerged from the exchange victorious.

She had his jutsu. She had his speed.

The body flicker required only a single hand seal, tiger, and faint memories of family she at once cast aside told her that with practice it could be cut down to even less than that. Which was exactly why she hadn't been able to copy it before now. Kakashi, the jonin sensei from Suna, and Roshi had all been past that crutch, and she was still too inexperienced to copy jutsu without hand seals to guide her. They had been nothing but riotous chakra in motion to her eyes, impossible to parse.

These shinobi were not Kakashi, or the man from Suna. They most _certainly_ were not Roshi. The man had put her in the ground, but he had used a hand seal to do it. Given away his technique and his inexperience in a single instant.

Sasuke formed the tiger seal and guided her chakra through it into her body just so, disappearing into the shunshin. Her sharingan burned with the effort of keeping track of her surroundings, and more than once she clipped a piece of debris and had to bite down on a scream. But at the end of it she appeared behind the nin she'd hit with her shuriken, a shinobi of unremarkable stature with brunette hair hanging limply over the crimson cloth of his headband.

He hadn't seen her coming. She watched him flinch back, bringing a kunai to bear in his defense, and instead of trying to pierce his guard she swung her chokuto down the length of his injured arm. It struck each of the three shuriken in his flesh, turning them like gears and forcing them deeper in, grinding against bone. The pain of it staggered him, but before she could follow up the earth was moving again.

She used the body flicker again, rushing past the sloping walls of earth and wreckage. The sheer speed of the technique was making her head spin, and the muscles in her legs and hips ached fiercely. But she couldn't slow down now. She needed to put a stop to that russet chakra.

"Sasuke! What's going on!?" Sakura cried out, running down the river. She'd been investigating by the whirlpool with Naruto and his clones.

"Three Iwa nin," she said, urging chakra to her eyes as she searched out her target. The ruin was swarming with tattered orange track suits and burning yellow chakra, but they were being snuffed out as quickly as the idiot could make them. The shinobi that had hit her was burning swathes of them away with _katon_ , steam mingling with chakra smoke as the flames burnt away clones and then themselves died out in the rain.

It gave her an idea. She could see that russet chakra seeping through the mud, swallowing up clones not already consumed by fire and crushing them beneath the earth. She shifted her chokuto in her hand, began to form hand seals.

"Sakura," she said when the girl finally made it to her side. Panting and wild eyed with fear, but healthy. It would have to do. "I've injured one of them, north moving north east. He's inexperienced and his right arm will be useless. Handle him."

"Me? Wait, hold on! There's-"

 _Katon!  
_  
Sasuke reared back and filled her throat with as much chakra as she could spare, and spat every lick of fire at the shinobi with russet chakra. She was too far away for it to hit, the rain was coming down too hard, but that was all fine. Amidst the rain and steam she saw him press both palms flat against the ground and call up a curving wall of earth to block what remained of her jutsu after the rain had its way with it.

The wall blocked his vision of her as surely as it had blocked hers of him, and her last three shuriken that she'd hidden inside the steam curved sharply around the sides of the wall. The wires attached to two of the three jerked as they were batted away, but the third went taut and held.

"Go!" She shouted at Sakura, vanishing into the body flicker once again. Her legs burned and her chest heaved for breath, an infuriating reminder that even if she could fight at this level with the sharingan she couldn't do so for long.

It would have to be long enough. She came out of it at the base of the wall, crouched and leapt up over the top of it with her chokuto braced against her shoulder. The first thing she noted was, disappointingly, that the third shuriken had only lodged itself in the enemy nin's flak jacket. The second was that he'd created another pit trap just behind the wall and her leap was going to put her right in it.

She _yanked_ on the wire attached to the shuriken in his flak jacket, pulling him perilously close to falling into his own trap and giving her the leverage she needed to change course. She hit the ground beside him and relished the chagrin in his eyes, bringing her blade to bear.

They clashed, her chokuto against his kunai, and she knew at once that if her wrist wasn't broken she could have overwhelmed him. He was stronger than her, but not all that much faster. And yet he matched her blow for blow because she couldn't leverage her full strength through her splinted wrist. She grit her teeth, narrowly turning aside a stab that would have punctured her kidney. It was too soon.

Making space again would only put him at the advantage. She was out of shuriken, burning chakra at a dangerous rate, and his bizarre _doton_ technique gave him complete control of the battlefield. It was like she was fighting the redhead all over again, but this time her opponent wasn't mindless, and likely not opposed to accepting help from teammates. She didn't know how long Naruto and Sakura would last, might only have seconds.

Which only left her one choice. She let up on her chokuto with her next swing, allowed him to strike it from her hand and jerked back. In that moment, while she reeled back and he moved to kick her weapon out of reach, she formed three hand seals where he wouldn't see. _Ox, rabbit, monkey_.

Lightning crackled bright blue from her elbow to the tips of her fingers, and she bit down savagely on her bottom lip as she fought to control it. Fingers straight, elbow locked.

The man from Iwa heard it, recognition and alarm driving him back. She rushed to close the distance, despaired at her inability to perform the shunshin without hand seals. She needed speed to use this technique as it was meant to be used. She needed more chakra. She needed-

Sasuke's hand twitched and jerked out of the knife shape she'd held it in, inches away from his chest, and the lightning danced out of her grasp. She wanted to scream. She _did_ scream, in pain but mostly frustration that she had come so close, all this way, for nothing. The enemy was already moving to retaliate, and without her chokuto she had no way to defend against it.

One of Naruto's clones dove off the top of the earth wall and hammered an elbow down on the enemy's head, howling a challenge. It was dispersed a moment later, cause of death a kunai to the temple, but it gave Sasuke time to leap back and for two more clones to rush past her into the fray. She took the distraction for what it was and used a body flicker to retrieve her chokuto.

"Hey!" Another clone whispered by her ear, and she almost dispelled it when she whipped around. "Woah, easy! It's me!"

She scowled. "Idiot. Where's the original?"

The clone waved a hand vaguely south, in the direction of the massive whirlpool at the dead village's center. "There are more guys back there, the boss is handling them."

"He's _what?_ " she demanded.

"Forget about that!" The clone pointed at the Iwa field manipulator, blue eyes narrowing to slits. "We've gotta work together and beat these guys down quick. I have a plan."

"You have a plan," she echoed.

The clone grinned. "Believe i-"

It dispelled.

Sasuke stared at the wispy chakra smoke it left behind, then around the battlefield, where similar clouds were thinning in the rain. Every single clone was gone.

The russet nin, free of distractions, started working up another field alteration. With no other option she closed the distance with a body flicker and brought her blade to bear. He aborted the technique and they clashed again, steel to steel. She was weaker now, her arm numbed by her failed attempt at Kakashi's jutsu, but she made up for it with adrenaline, fear that Naruto's clones had dispelled for a reason, and sheer _outrage-  
_  
The nin with the ruined arm slammed bodily into her, driving her off balance long enough for the man with russet chakra to knock her chokuto from her grip a second time. She lashed out at the new arrival's injured arm, but he bulled into her, overwhelmed her with size and weight. She was thrown to the ground, a knee planted in the small of her back.

"Gotcha," he hissed, wrenching her broken wrist behind her. Sasuke saw stars and felt pain like no other.

"Ittan," said another voice, the shinobi she'd stolen the body flicker from. He stalked through the ruins, dragging Sakura by her hair. Sasuke's teammate sobbed and thrashed for all the good it did her.

"That's two," the man with russet chakra, Ittan, said. He had dark features that tended towards brown, hard eyes and a goatee that made him look older than he probably was. "Where did the others go?"

"Ground zero." At a motion from Ittan the other man tossed Sakura forward, and a dome of chakra-saturated earth rose up around her. She didn't have time to scream.

Sasuke snarled and jerked, ignoring the pain- no, accepting the pain, using it, struggling even harder. The worthless Iwa nin with the ruined arm grunted and cursed as she bucked, until the other worthless nin in the business of giving away jutsu grabbed her by the back of her neck and shoved her face into the dirt.

"I've got the Uchiha," Ittan said, and earth rose up around her, anchoring each of her limbs until she could only move her neck. "Both of you, go. Secure the jinchuriki." She stilled.

The what?

* * *

Naruto couldn't breathe. There were a lot of things he vaguely thought he should be worried about, but at the moment, drowning was most of them.

He lurched up and gasped, taking in air greedily. It tasted stale and acrid. He cast around, pulse beginning to pound as he remembered being found, fighting, and being hit by something unseen. But there was no one around. More than that, he wasn't in the ruined village anymore. Or at least, he wasn't anywhere near the surface. He was in a tunnel, illuminated by a faint yellow light. Pipes were fastened to the ceiling and walls, and foul water flowing around him.

It looked like a sewer. Was he underneath the village? Had they hit him that hard? Naruto climbed to his feet, stretched experimentally, but aside from a faint burning on his skin where the sewer water had touched, he felt just about fine.

Which meant he had to hurry up and get back in the fight. Naruto followed the flow of the water, sprinting down the corridor while he rifled through the memories of his clones. It wasn't looking good. No matter how fast Sasuke whipped around the field - and damn it, she _was_ fast! - she couldn't take on three enemy nin by herself with that wrist.

He needed to get back in it to win it, make clones like he'd never made clones before, and if it came down to it he'd throw them over his shoulders and book it like he did the last time- Naruto skidded to a stop.

He'd reached the end of the tunnel, and entered into something else. Cavern wasn't the right word, because it was clearly man-made, but he'd never heard of any kind of sewer this _massive_. He could have fit all four faces of the Hokage Mountain into the place without touching either edge. There were dozens of other tunnels feeding into the place, on either side and also above him, gushing foul water that burned a sullen red.

But what brought him to a dead stop were the bars on the far side. Each one thicker around than his waist, they rose hundreds of feet into the air and disappeared somewhere into the ceiling. They were framed on each side by great spiral carvings, driven into the stone all the way up. And in the center, where the bars met to form a gate, a single slip of paper was pasted to the metal.

It read _fuuin_. Seal.

The space beyond the bars fell away into shadows that oozed red light. Naruto's skin crawled with the familiar sensation of being watched, being marked, being _hated-  
_  
 **"Pathetic."  
**  
Naruto stumbled and fell back into the water. The pipes rattled and the water rippled at the sheer volume of the word. It sounded like nothing any human could replicate, like thunder grinding down a mountain, snarling and booming every syllable. Cold sweat offset the burning water. He felt scared to breathe.

 **"Buried by the monkey, given a taste of true strength, and already you return to the brink. Weak, even for your powerless race."  
**  
Naruto braced himself on a shaking fist, forcing himself to rise. "Who the hell are you?" It didn't come out sounding the way he wanted it. A little too scared.

 **"I am all the world's evils."** Waves surged out through the bars, kicked up by something too massive to be real. **"The first and only demon."  
**  
Crimson eyes rolled open a hundred feet in the air, and the Kyuubi no Kitsune looked down on him.

"But you're dead." It was the first thing that came to mind, once he overcame the fear enough to think. The thought gained traction, inspired confidence. "The Yondaime _killed_ you."

 **"You can't kill hatred with a blade."** It prowled, the outline of it bristling with caustic red light. **"I live in the heart of every man. For as long as your foul race continues to fester, I will never die."  
**  
 _The living embodiment of hatred. Wherever human suffering goes, the Kyuubi is sure to follow._ He'd thought it was just something adults said to scare kids. They all had. Everyone knew the Yondaime killed the Kyuubi twelve years back _._ The old man Hokage had said it himself. So why was it here? Why wasn't it dead?

"You're in everyone?" he finally asked. "Sakura and Sasuke? Even... Kakashi?"

The water simmered around his ankles, boiling hot. He ground his teeth until he thought they might crack. This bastard fox. This ugly mountain of fur. "That was you. You gave me power, but not Kakashi? _Why!?"  
_  
 ** _"_ He was empty. I exist where hatred overcomes virtue, but he had nothing of either. Dead from within." **It bared its teeth, and each one was larger than Naruto. **"Your rage demanded retribution at any price. So it is with every human I devour."  
**  
"Like hell I'll let you eat me," he snapped. "You're trapped behind those bars, aren't ya? Whatever this is, my heart, my chakra, doesn't matter. You can't get out."

The hiss of rushing air was his only warning before nine crimson tails slammed into the bars and rocked the floor out from under him. Naruto thrashed in the burning waves of sewer water, the ominous sound of ringing metal echoing throughout the chamber. He fought to balance himself on the water's surface with chakra, panting and wide eyed.

 **"These bars will rust. Your suffering, impotent wrath will bring them to ruin, every call for my power grinding them further to dust. Until one day they are nothing but remnants of hope and you another soul in my stomach. And then I will be free again."** It was nothing but a promise. Naruto could see it in his mind's eye.

"Never." He denied it anyway. "I'll never let you out. I'd rather die!"

 **"Then die,"** the Kyuubi dismissed him. **"There will be other hateful souls."  
**  
 _"I want to kill a certain man..."  
_  
He tried not to think about it, but he didn't last long. Sasuke was nothing but hate. Her whole ambition in life was murder. Was the fox in her head too, telling her the same thing it was telling him? Given the choice between dying here in who fucking knows, somewhere country, or rolling the dice on a demon's power, which one would she pick? He knew exactly which one she'd pick. The _bastard_.

"Give me the power," he said, before he could convince himself otherwise. "Only me."

 **"Insolent child. I do as I please."  
**  
"Damn fox!" He'd thrown terror to the wind somewhere along the way, and now he was running on pure impudence. "My friends are dying out there! Our sensei is already dead! I won't lose another one, not to Iwa or Suna, and not to _you_. So give it all to me."

The Kyuubi's eyes burned crimson, swallowing up its pupils. **"And in exchange?"  
**  
"What do you want?" he asked, defiant. If this was what it took, he'd bend so his teammates didn't have to break. If he wasn't strong enough on his own, he'd take the fox's power.

The king of monsters laughed, and Naruto felt it in his soul.

 **"The only thing you have to give."**

"Deal."


	3. Chapter 3

Naruto hit the bottom of the dead city's whirlpool and thrashed awake, fighting the thrust of the current in vain. He gagged on water that had filled his lungs while he was unconscious, his insides burning with the same heat that they had when he'd fought Roshi. He was finally thrown from the water by gravity and the whirling current, bouncing off slick rock and landing on all fours.

He hacked and vomited up bloody water. The sight set off primal alarms in his head, yet as he cleared the last of it from his throat he felt ready to fight. His body burned with adrenaline in place of pain. The stomach wound from the jutsu that put him in the whirlpool, a javelin of earth thicker around than his wrist, had been wiped clean by caustic red chakra.

Naruto bounded up the walls of the cave, hands and feet sticking to the slippery surface with unnatural ease. His chakra followed his intent like it had a mind of its own- which, he realized with some discomfort, it did. He shook it off. No going back now.

The cavern was massive, and as he scaled the walls of it Naruto saw it was littered with the same wreckage as the surface. Broken buildings, uprooted trees and stone, all stretching out into the darkness of what looked like an cavernous network of underground rivers. Naruto struggled to make sense of it.

It looked like the village's central heart had been crumpled into a ball and spiked through the earth.

Whatever it was, he didn't have time to wonder. Naruto dug clawed fingers into the stone, concentrating chakra into his hands and feet, and leapt up into the whirlpool with all the strength the Kyuubi had given him. The surface of the water hit him hard, but not hard enough to stop him. He shot up like a thrown kunai and flew into open air.

Sensations he had no words to describe assaulted him from three sides. He reached for some frame of reference for the vile feelings and found memories. An old shop keep chasing him out the door with a broom, a mother with wrinkles around her eyes pulling her daughter away, the look on Sasuke's face as he loudly declared he'd beat her in their next spar. Naruto spun through the air and landed on the water's surface, his chakra holding him aloft while he reeled. What the _hell_ was this?

 **Clarity.** The Kyuubi's voice rumbled in his head. **See humanity as it truly is.  
**  
He found the sources of the ugly sensations in the three Iwa nin that had ambushed him and Sakura. They didn't seem surprised to see him. In fact, it looked like they'd been expecting him to come back swinging. Naruto threw himself sideways across the surface of the water to avoid another stone javelin and raced for land.

He set his sights on the woman hurling projectiles, a long black ponytail and a beige flak jacket distinguishing her from her teammates. She finished a string of hand seals while he closed the distance, burying her arm to the elbow in the earth and drawing another javelin. Horrible sensations assaulted him from both sides, and he slammed to a stop, watching the other two nin rocket through the space he would have been with weapons bared.

He dashed sideways to avoid the next javelin, leaping across wreckage on all floors in an attempt to circle around them. One source of the stomach-churning sensation threaded the distance between them in a split second, and he threw himself flat against the ground as a man with a scar on his left cheek drilled through a stone wall that would have been him. Naruto hit him as hard as he'd hit Roshi, tackling him through stone and riding him to the earth.

The Iwa nin rolled and crossed his arms over his face and neck, and that was all that saved him. Naruto flayed the skin of his forearms with three swipes of his clawed fingers before he realized what he was doing, horror wrestling control from the furious haze of the Kyuubi's chakra. He jumped off and made space just in time to feel the approach of another nauseating sensation.

Naruto scrambled back from the third shinobi's jutsu, a wave of mud that blocked him off from the injured Iwa nin. He felt the kunoichi circling around, seeking a vantage to fling another projectile. The third shinobi rushed to engage him, absolutely seething to Naruto's senses, and his hands were covered in intricately brushed ink.

 **They will bind you.**

Like _hell._ Naruto ran, forcing his muscles past their limits as his mind raced for a solution. Every second he spent here was another second Sakura and Sasuke had to contend with their three nin. He cobbled together a plan in the moments it took him to adjust his position, and when he finally cemented it he pivoted and dove through a broken window, slamming into the kunoichi's blindside.

A choked shout was all she managed before he formed a cross and buried her under a pile of clones, and for the first time he got an unobstructed look at his altered appearance. Clawed fingers and toes, skin that turned rain drops to steam as soon as they made contact, jutting canines, and the Kyuubi's own eyes. He looked like a monster. He _was_ a monster.

Naruto howled and the sound of it was all wrong. But it served its purpose. The kunoichi's teammates converged on him, and in turn were assaulted on all sides by demonic clones. They were better nin than him, better fighters, and if the Kyuubi was telling the truth they even had a way to bind his new strength. But he could _feel_ them, and so could his clones. He could ambush them without ever seeing them. He could win.

Fear. Disgust. _Contempt._ He finally identified the negative sensations rolling off the three enemy nin, felt sick to his stomach with the weight of them. The Kyuubi had given him its sense for negative emotions. It made him want to throw up. It was the best weapon he had.

Naruto cast his senses wide and felt five more points of horrible emotion in the distance. Two were approaching the whirlpool while the other three remained behind, one terrified, one grim, and the last- the last roiled with _layers_ of such vile negativity it made Naruto's head spin.

He shook himself like an animal and made two more clones. They went wide on either side of him, howling and raising hell while he made a beeline for the three that had remained behind. Every exertion of the Kyuubi's power stoked the flame in his gut, made him madder. He was growing stronger by the second, but a faint burning in his veins warned him that he was reaching too far. Doing too much damage.

Tunnel vision nearly ended him when he kicked off a wall and found himself hurtling into a gaping hole in the ground. He panicked, crossed his fingers and made clones by the dozens. They fell screaming into the pit while he dashed across, using them as footholds. He recognized the jutsu, and that saved him from the rising walls of a dome that would have put him out of the fight as sure as any javelin or seal.

The ruins shifted like waves, rising to absurd heights and crashing down with fatal force. Naruto bounded through the chaos on all fours, an orientation that felt all too comfortable with the Kyuubi's chakra snarling through his veins. He set his new senses on the vilest of the three signatures, crashing through a window and leaping over a toppling refrigerator as he closed in on them. He tore clear through the ruined apartment walls and pounced on the source of the nauseating hatred-

Sasuke cried out as he bulled into her, tearing her free of the restraints she'd been partially buried in and sending them both tumbling.

 **"It was you!?"** _Sasuke_? He'd known she had issues, but this-

"Naruto?" For a moment she had that same disbelieving look in her eyes, but it quickly gave way to something darker. "What _are_ you, idiot?"

 _A monster._ **"Tell ya later. We need to get out."**

Sasuke didn't look happy, but she didn't push him. "The field manipulator is close by. Sakura is-"

 **"I know. I feel 'em."** He grimaced at the look she gave him, waving a clawed hand. **"Later. Follow my lead."**

He made more clones and they took off howling into the shifting rubble. Within seconds he remembered the deaths of half a dozen, fallen into pits that opened and closed like mouths at their creator's signal. But more kept on moving, kicking up hell and drawing attention to themselves. He could feel the two Iwa nin he'd drawn off on his way over doubling back. They'd have to be quick.

Naruto loped through the waves, slower at first, but when Sasuke made it clear she could keep up with his top speed using some new jutsu she'd stolen he took off full throttle.

 **"You grab Sakura while I distract this guy, and then we're getting the hell outta here,"** he explained as best he could with his teeth crowding up more space than usual in his jaw. Sasuke spared him a contemptuous look in between sprinting bursts.

"Distract him how?"

 **"I'm gonna hit him hard."  
**  
"Hit him hard," she echoed.

Naruto grinned, and it was all fangs. **" _Really_ hard."  
**  
The shinobi in the eye of the _doton_ storm saw them coming and abruptly all of the waves and fissures rippled to stillness. Naruto didn't even have time to process the warning Sasuke shouted before the enemy nin slammed both palms to the ground and everything in sight tilted on an axis the enemy controlled. The village itself rose up, obscuring the man from view, overtaking the stormy skies, and then falling. A tidal wave.

Naruto surrendered himself to noxious red fury, urged as much of it through his limbs as the fox would give him. He raced across the waves so fast that he lost all control of his senses, all but one, and followed the beacon of the Iwa nin's contempt to its source.

He slammed through the man's jutsu like it really was nothing but water, and found him within arm's length. A kunai was brought to bear and Naruto didn't waste time trying to parry it. The fox had healed him once. It could heal him again.

Steel sunk into the juncture between his neck and shoulder and Naruto lunged through it, pumping chakra into his hand until his fingers were rigid with it. He slapped the veteran shinobi aside and felt ribs shatter beneath the blow.

The man crumpled just like Kakashi had. And just like Kakashi, he didn't move again.

Naruto staggered and fell beside him, pawing at the knife and struggling to breathe. The Kyuubi would heal him. He'd be alright. He just needed to pull it out. One quick yank and it'd be over. Just grab it-

He made a shadow clone. Pointed at the knife in his neck. His clone cringed, but gripped it in a clawed hand.

 **"Grit those teeth, boss."  
**  
Even monsters had limits.

* * *

Sasuke was sick and tired of running away. She was sick and tired of nursing a broken wrist, of never being dry, of eating toads and snakes and whatever else could be found in the muck. She was losing patience with herself, more and more each day that Kakashi's assassination technique eluded her. She was at her limit with Sakura, who had been annoying before they'd been thrust into this mess, and hadn't gotten better since.

Beyond all that, though, Sasuke was _sick to death_ of not knowing what to expect from Uzumaki Naruto.

Sakura cried out in alarm, nearly falling from a tree branch as their teammate hurtled past, running through the trees on all fours like an animal. Sasuke cursed and flickered after him, burning chakra that she really needed to be conserving.

"Naruto!" she shouted, but if he heard her he didn't show it. He kept barreling on, a blood-orange comet that made her sharingan ache just looking at it. "Hey! _Idiot!_ " A branch cracked and broke under him, and he went spiraling to the dirt.

He didn't get back up. Sasuke flickered and landed beside him, alarm overtaking aggravation as she watched him writhe on the ground. He was in bad shape, of course he was- the things she'd seen him do to get them out of that dead village... Sasuke hissed as she took a good look at him, and saw that it wasn't just his chakra that had turned an angry red. He looked like he'd been scalded from head to toe.

"What have you done to yourself?" She fumbled for her canteen and dumped its contents over his exposed skin. It didn't help. Naruto screamed through clenched teeth- no, not clenched. They'd grown again, like the first time, and locked together. He twisted away from the canteen, scrabbling at the skin that had been doused, and Sasuke lunged to seize his hands.

They came away covered in his own blood. He had _claws_. Sasuke racked her brain for any technique, any piece of learning they might have done in the Academy, that could explain it. Was it a family technique? Something forbidden? She had no idea, and she _hated_ it.

A scream broke her train of thought, and this time it wasn't Naruto. "What is that!?"

Sakura had caught up. Wonderful. Sasuke grunted as her stupid teammate thrashed in her grip, trying to escape with strength he really shouldn't have. She released the arm she was holding down with her broken wrist, pressing it down with her elbow instead. Sakura, meanwhile, kept on babbling.

"W-what is- Sasuke, who- no, _what_ -"

"It's obviously Naruto," she snapped. "I don't know what's going on either, but we can find out when he's not dying. Help me."

Sakura inched closer, but every time Naruto thrashed or made a noise she flinched back. Useless. Sasuke was considering the merits of just battering his head with the ring of a kunai until he passed out when she heard someone crashing through the treetops behind them. Damn it, not now, not when they were so close to escaping-

 **"Sasuke!"** Naruto called, and Sasuke whipped around to see another copy of the idiot barrel out of the trees and land heavily, unbalanced by the Iwa nin slung limply over his shoulder. Sakura lurched away from the clone, terrified by his vicious appearance. The original- if he even was the original- tossed her off in the moment of confusion. She threw herself back on top of him, wrestling his hands away from where they'd been clawing at his throat.

"What have you done?" she demanded, recognizing the field manipulator, Ittan. "Why would you bring him here? And why are you like _this?_ " She jerked her head at the Naruto underneath her.

 **"I couldn't just- he's _dying_ , Sasuke," **the clone said desperately, laying the enemy nin down with absurd care. **"It was that new jutsu you showed the boss, he was just trying to knock the guy out but it hurt him real bad and-"  
**  
"So?" Sasuke snarled and slammed the original Naruto back to the dirt when he tried lurching up. "They're the enemy, you fucking _idiot_. You think they'd care if you died? You think they cared when Kakashi died?"

The clone made an awful expression, torment twisting his bestial features into something nightmarish. **"We're not them, bastard. It's not right."  
**  
"You're not going to be anything if we don't stop whatever is happening to your boss," she said, sharingan straining to parse the movement of his chakra. It was roiling through his body independent of any hand seals or intent, from what she could see. Wherever it passed, the idiot's muscles spasmed and his skin darkened to a more alarming red. Why was he still channeling chakra? _How_ was he still channeling, despite his condition?

Sasuke looked at the clone, fretting over the limp Iwa nin, and the cord of blood red chakra connecting him to the original.

"Naruto."

The clone looked up. **"Yea-"** Her kunai drove through his right eye and he burst into chakra smoke. The Naruto underneath her arched up, heaving a strangled shout through his crowded teeth, and then collapsed. Sasuke held him down for a few moments just to be sure, and then leaned back. He didn't move.

"Sasuke..." Sakura said, quietly. Her voice was shaking. "This is too much. I can't do it anymore."

"Do what?" Sasuke snapped. "You haven't done anything, Sakura." It was harsh, she knew. Watching her teammate's eyes fill with tears didn't give her any satisfaction, but Sasuke was just so tired.

"We're just genin!" Sakura sobbed, collapsing back against a tree as everything she'd been holding in finally split her open. "I know what they told us in the Academy, I knew there'd be a risk, but this- this isn't fair! We're supposed to have Kakashi. And Iwa is supposed to respect the Hokage's word, they _agreed_." She slumped down onto her butt, scratching frantically at her scalp. "This wasn't even our mission!"

"I know it isn't fair. Giving up won't change that."

"What if it did?" Sakura asked. "They could have killed us back there, but they didn't. What if they've been following us for another reason?"

"Don't be stupid, Sakura," she said, looking Naruto over. His skin wasn't clearing up, but it wasn't getting worse either. The gouges, though...

"I'm serious! We know we're not anywhere near Fire Country, so what if they just want us detained? Or- it could be a preemptive move, taking us into their custody before Hokage-sama finds out what happened to s-sensei and tries to find us. Maybe it's _better_ if we surrender. They could offer us back as hostages-"

"Look at me," Sasuke demanded. Sakura did, and she felt sick at the sight of her. Tear-stained cheeks, with more welling up in exhausted green eyes, ragged pink hair coated in grime. That was it. A little mud, some bruises. She was at the end of her rope, and for what?

"You see these eyes?" They had started to ache sometime during the fight, and had only worsened since, but she needed them as they were. "The sharingan is my clan's greatest strength. It's the greatest bloodline technique there has ever been, and I am the only one left to bear it." Or would be, soon enough. "Countries have started wars over bloodlines half as famous as mine. Do you honestly believe Iwa would just... give me back?"

Silence and more tears were her answer. Sasuke sighed.

"Give me your first aid supplies."

Sakura made no move to help while she patched up the worst of Naruto's self-inflicted wounds. The last of her adrenaline was on its way out, bringing the throbbing of her wrist into stark focus while she tried to maneuver his dead weight and the bandages. Whatever healing it had been doing was shot. It might have been worse than before. Add that to the fact that the idiot could apparently bleed again, and things weren't looking good.

"They were right, weren't they?" Sakura asked, so softly that it could have been the wind.

"Hn?"

"About Naruto. Your parents told you, too, didn't they? Ah, I mean- before they-"

"Died?" Sasuke said, impatient. "No, they didn't. Why would they?"

Sakura looked shocked. "Nothing? They didn't tell you anything?"

"Sakura." The girl flinched back at the tone of her voice, shifted her eyes away.

"My parents told me to stay away from him, when I first started at the Academy," she said. Softly again, like they weren't the only two conscious people there. "They said he was no good. Dangerous. It wasn't just them, either. Have you ever seen him walk down the street? People avoid him, like he's sick. Or feral."

"He saved us," Sasuke said, hating the taste of the words. "Whatever he is, he's the reason we're still alive. Why should I care what other people think of him?"

"Look at him!" Sakura jerked a finger. "Look at that and tell me it's the same idiot we left Konoha with. Tell me that isn't exactly what my parents warned me about five years ago! Tell me he's not some kind of _monster_ , Sasuke!"

Sasuke looked, and pained blue eyes looked back at her.

* * *

"Talk to me."

It wasn't the elegant break that the silence had been begging for, but Sasuke had never been an elegant girl. Even if circumstances hadn't been what they were, she'd never had the patience for word games or coddling. That part of her had died with the rest of the Uchiha.

Hours had passed since their escape from the desolated village and their pursuers from Iwa. The night was thick with rainfall, insects, and nocturnal birdcalls. They were alone, the two of them, separated from Sakura and their prisoner by a short distance of trees and vines. Close enough to react, far enough to pretend the other wasn't really there. Sakura had taken on the roll of caring for Ittan, who was miraculously still breathing after Naruto shattered every rib in his sternum. She'd been more comfortable tending to an enemy than their teammate.

Sasuke had waited too long already, given the idiot hours after he closed his eyes and pretended to sleep through Sakura calling him a monster. No more. She wanted answers.

"You promised me answers, dead last. What happened to never going back on your word?"

Goading him had always been easy. The monstrous red chakra hadn't changed that. She saw him stiffen, then after a moment shove himself up onto his elbow and glare at her. His eyes were violet in the night.

"I keep my promises, bastard," he said dangerously. Sasuke scoffed and leaned back on her hands. The ground was soft and yielding, as thoroughly soaked through as they were.

"Then talk to me," she repeated. He grimaced.

"What do you want to know?"

"Everything." What did he think this was? They weren't in the Academy anymore. They weren't under a jounin's protection. They couldn't afford secrets. "I'm not Sakura. I don't care what the village thinks of you, or what you look like when you use that power. I care about surviving." She met his eyes, her red to his violet, and sneered. "So stop avoiding the question, _idiot_. What are you?"

After a long, tense silence, Naruto sat up across from her, close enough that their noses could touch if either leaned in just a few inches. "I'm a monster."

She rolled her eyes.

"I'm serious!" he whispered harshly. Sasuke believed him- rather, she believed that he believed he was a monster. But he had no idea what a real monster was. Even Roshi and Suna's little psychopath couldn't compare to the real thing.

"Explain it to me, then," she said, unwilling to argue the point. He could wallow in self-pity all he wanted.

"I'm not... strong." Sasuke very nearly made a comment on that, but held it back. Some vague feeling, a gut instinct, told her that he was one snide remark away from locking up completely. "Not like Kakashi-sensei, not like _them._ I'm not some prodigy or genius, like you and Sakura. When it really counted I couldn't do anything. It made me so _mad_."

Blood red chakra seethed outward from a central point in his stomach, slowly, in whisper-thin tendrils that dispersed through his body like blood in water. Sasuke said nothing.

"What do you know about the Kyuubi?" he asked suddenly. Her mind went blank.

 _Jinchuriki.  
_  
"What are you saying?" she whispered, staring at the alien chakra winding through his body with growing horror.

"Me, I didn't know much. It's what I get for skipping class all the time, I guess," he said, his voice giving lie to the airy words. "Didn't seem important, y'know? The Yondaime killed it, right? Everyone said so.

"Turns out." He grinned mirthlessly, revealing canines just long and sharp enough be noticeable. "They lied."

"So that chakra," she ventured, watching it ooze up into his eyes, turning them steadily darker. Not quite red, but far from blue.

"Remember that corny speech Iruka-sensei gave us back on our field trip to the Hokage Mountain?" he asked. She did. It was one of the few times the dead last had actually shown up to class on time, if she recalled. "The one about the Yondaime's sacrifice? _Where human suffering goes, the Kyuubi is sure to follow. The Yondaime died protecting us from the consequences of our own cruelty,_ yadda yadda yadda."

"I do."

"That part was true." His pretend mirth drained away. He looked haunted. Scared. "I should have died out there, Sasuke. That old man killed me a hundred times, I could feel it. But I was too mad to die. Something inside of me wouldn't let me."

Sasuke didn't say a word. Naruto waited, silently begging her to say something, but she wouldn't. She needed to hear it from his mouth.

He whispered, defeated, "It was the Kyuubi. It gave me power then, and it gave me power today. I _saw_ it. The Yondaime might've killed its body, but it's still alive. It told me everything. No matter how many times we kill it, the damn fox can just come back. It's inside all of us. Just needs to find the right monster with nothing to lose."

"So the chakra, the healing, the transformation...?"

"All of it."

Everything she'd seen him do, going from a one-note failure to a monster that could stand toe-to-toe with the elite, that was all the Kyuubi's doing. Simple as that? And it was inside _all_ of them?

"And it gave you its chakra... for free?" she asked slowly. Naruto immediately leaned back from her, lips lifting in a snarl.

"Don't even think about it, bastard." Sasuke lashed out and snatched the tattered collar of his tracksuit. She yanked him in close, her heart beginning to race.

"Answer me!" she hissed. "What did you give it? What have you _done?_ "

He stared at her, baffled. "You mean you don't..."

"Don't what?" Sasuke shook him, unable to believe what she was hearing. "Don't know what you did to convince a _demon_ to give you its power, out of every human in existence? Don't know how you could be even more of a fool than I already thought?"

"I..." he tugged on her hand, but she refused to let go. "I made it a deal."

"What kind of deal?"

"It gives me chakra when I need it, and I let it live through me- not controlling me or anything!" he quickly added, seeing the look on her face. "Just, watching."

"And that's it?" she asked skeptically. He winced and shook his head.

"We made a bet." Sasuke slowly let her grip fall away. Their hands fell into his lap. "It's locked up inside me, somehow, but the more I use its chakra, the weaker the bars get. I bet that before the bars break, I'll get so strong that I'll never need to use its power again. If I win, it stays dead for as long as I live. Doesn't mess with anyone else. If I lose..."

His hand tightened around hers. Sasuke hesitated. Then she wrapped her fingers around his and squeezed.

"If I lose, it takes my body and makes me watch. Forever."

The forest's white noise was deafening. Sasuke just looked at him, lost for words, and he looked back at her, bleakly resigned. Distantly, as if she was having the thought outside of herself, she wondered at how violently their world had changed in so short a time. It was a feeling she'd had before, in the days following the massacre. It had barely been two months since they'd graduated from the Academy. Weeks since they'd been pulling weeds and walking dogs. And now he'd sold his soul.

"Why?" It was all she could say.

"Because Kakashi-sensei died so we could get back home, and trusted _me_ to get us there. Because I've never had anything to lose, and now I have you guys. Because it's all I could do."

She bit her lip, warring with a dozen different impulses.

"I'm going to kill my brother."

In the dark and the damp, she opened up.

"Why?" he echoed. Unsurprised, but raptly focused. Sasuke focused on breathing, not on the words. Not the memories.

"Itachi was everything to me. My best friend, my role model, my hero. He was kind, and thoughtful, and made time for me when no one else would. Genin at seven years old, chunin at eleven, and ANBU captain at thirteen. As far as I was concerned, the sun rose in the palm of his hand." She swallowed back bile. "When I was eight years old he murdered everyone in our family and made me watch.

"I still don't know why he did it, or why he spared me. But the why doesn't matter. He took everything from me, so I'm going to take everything from him. Whatever it takes, I _will_ kill him. I will bring my family peace."

"Sasuke..."

"So don't think this is all up to you," she said fiercely. "We both have monsters to face. We both have dreams. If we work together, we can survive this. We have to."

His fingers bled white around hers, and she gripped back just as hard. She watched the demon's chakra thin and fade from his body with cold satisfaction.

"We do," Naruto said, defiant. "But how?"

"You said you can sense people when you're using its chakra?"

"Negative emotions, yeah. I can feel everything the Kyuubi feels, all the worst of people." He leaned in conspiratorially. "You're the nastiest of 'em all."

Of that, she had no doubt.

"Then I have a plan. But it's only going to work if you trust me, no questions asked."

"It goes both ways." He leaned in. "Can you trust me?"

She leaned in to meet him, forehead to forehead. With just a hint of mirth, she said, "If I must."

He snickered. "Bastard."

She smiled. "Idiot."

That was the start of it all.


End file.
